keepsakes
by tick tock tick tock
Summary: with you whenever, we're together, forever and ever. t h a n k y o u . / THG Rin&Len.


**With you whenever, we're together, forever and ever.**

**Okay?**

**'Kay.**

* * *

**1. brush**

Can I stand here for a moment? Sorry, sis. Won't take long. What, I'm invading your privacy? Like you have any! Eheh, I'm spying on your girl stuff? No, I'm not that kind of person! No way!

I... just.

Would like to have one bit of you.

No! N-not in that meaning! What? No! Ugh -

Hey, d'you remember this brush? Ma bought it for your sixth fourth birthday, when your hair started looking like a lion's mane. Yep, a baby lion's mane. And don't you kick me!

I... I think you're prettier with short hair. Your pins match you. And your bow, bunny... But you still use that brush, don't you? It's so worn, it's gonna break if you forget to wash your hair properly. Look, it's already cracked and snagged with hair. Ahh! I'm joking, Rin! We all know that you spend two hours in the shower a day, huh - ow!

What? Yeah. Mikuo'd definitely go for you.

...Don't ask me. Dude's kinda nuts. Like his sister. And you stop smacking me with that brush. It may be old, but you and your strength... Remember when we were wrestling in the kitchen and you threw me off so hard I banged against the pile of pots and broke my collarbone? Or the time you punched me over that last piece of canned tangerine and broke my nose? Or...

Or when you kicked Tei off me when she was busy threatening me with a kiss or a slit throat?

Me? Being sappy? Rinny-bitch.

...

Sorry, sorry. It's just that I'm nervous, that's all. Aren't you?

I mean, it's the Reaping. The so-called game of luck. I'm not the one who started calling it that! Jus' you and your odd 'aspirations' to be a writer. As if we'll ever be anything but goddamned coal miners in this _place_. But hey, it's better than smelling rotten fish all day, right?

...I hate you.

But really, the Reaping... Don't you ever think...?

A coward? Me? Aw, thanks.

Really!

...Thanks a lot.

* * *

**"Len..."**

**"Kagamine?"**

**"I-I-I... I..."**

**"Volunteer!"**

* * *

**2. twelve-eyed dice**

We used to play so many games, didn't we? Sitting on the orange carpet between our beds, throwing dice late into the night.

It's full of memories - the twelve-eyed dice.

We found it in the dumpster the first time we skipped school. We never did that again, did we? That made Ma so unhappy, and we didn't like to see her unhappy.

2 and 3 and 5 and two of 6. Yet we loved that thing.

I'm sorry, I'll tell you something.

"What?"

I know where it is.

It's under my bed, squeezed into that crack between polka-dot panel and prison-stripe panel. I saw it, didn't want it. Hey, I was scared. It was under the bed, after all.

I think I'll go find it. I may, just may need it. If not, I'll certainly lose it.

I love how we loved those games of luck and chance. Sometimes, you'd win, sometimes, I'd lose, or vice versa. Games of luck for us twins, sitting in the cold winter and muffling our giggles so that da won't find out. Hush, hush, so that Da doesn't take away our only toy.

Games of luck.

We used to love them.

_"I've been thinking... Len? You know, the Reapings?"_

_"I got five... yeah?"_

_"The Reapings.. they're just a game. They're a game of who's gonna die and who's gonna live, and who's gonna lose her kids and who's gonna live single."_

_"Why aren't you philosophical today, Rin-Rin?"_

_"Shut up! What if you lose?"_

_"Whadd'ya mean?"_

_"What if you lose? What if the die lands wrong and I'm Reaped?"_

_"You and your metaphors... I'll be happy! - No one to clog up the bathwater in the morning. Seriously, cut your hair! You'd look better with short hair, anyway. And what's with that white ribbon? Are you some sort of retarded doll?"_

_"...Damn you! Just be glad that we're lucky!"_

_"Yes... ma'am."_

* * *

**I just love games of luck, don't you?**

**Tee-hee!**

**So**

**let**

**me**

**choose your**

**n**

**a**

**m**

**e**

* * *

**3. black gloves**

Black.

Such a sad color.

Remember Mew? The nextdoors girl, all quiet and monochrome. The girl with the black laced gloves that six-year-old you adored so much.

She was a nice girl, I think.

- Or at least until her legs were chopped off and her hands cut to the bone.

Don't be sick, you tell me. I've always been sick, Rin, filled with death all around and -

Even you, Rinny. Even you.

You cried and cried with Ma and Da when we watched her die. You cried and cried afterwards, looking at the pretty black gloves that she left you. Cried and cried because they were so pretty and morbid and you wanted to wear them so badly but couldn't.

As a way of honoring her, I think, you put those gloves on your hands today.

I watched the black silk-covered hand raise itself into the air and heard your voice ring out ragged and broken in the late afternoon air and thought, it's all the black gloves' fault.

Bad things happen when those gloves are around. One, two, three deaths that inhabit the silk strings and delicate stitching.

But you're so pretty in them.

You shouldn't be so pretty to me, should you? Blue-eyed and sun-haired and absolutely beautiful. You are cruel, dear sister.

But.

You were so pretty that day too, the second death-day.

That day when you were wearing those black laced gloves, that day when we all cried and I held your right hand as you sobbed into your left, that day when the skies were gray and the birds were tweeting pitifully and that day I think was the last I saw your tears.

Remember that day?

When Da died.

They say that black used to be the color worn to funerals, long ago when the words hunger and games had no place together and children could have as much tangerines as they wanted.

Fitting then, I suppose.

What do you say when a dear person dies (god no - ) ?

Thank you for being a wonderful sister? Thank you for being with us?

Thank you?

* * *

**the bell rings its last**

**(&)**

**I can't move**

* * *

**4. flat-soled slippers**

"Give them to Yuki."

I hold those brown shoes, fine leather and knotted drawstrings. Aren't they supposed to be on your feet?

"Len - "

I stare at you. Why are you crying? You never cry. And you were so pretty this morning with your eyeshadow too - dartmouth green, you said? - Mikuo was staring at you the whole day. Now they're all smudged, darkened. Your eyes don't deserve to be like that.

Rin, I say. Empty. Rin. Rin?

"It's not going to help me anyway," you say. "Yuki needs them. You've seen her shoes."

Rin?

"Please, Len. I'm beyond saving, so give them to someone who can make use of them."

Rin...?

I'm a broken-down toy, repeating your name over and over. Will you hold me?

"Len..." you sigh, push me away and manage a smile, wipe your eyes and stay iron-strong.

You and your facts and your thoughts and your smile - 'cause why are you smiling now? Why do you hurt me like this? You? Me? Miku and Mikuo and Yuki? The statue-faced Peacekeeper calls that time's over.

Over?

"Your sponsors, Rin - " I keep on going despite the bullets lodged in my throat. "If you don't have these slippers then you won't look good and - " the Peacekeeper calls again, but I ignore him, " - what if you don't get any sponsors and, and, if you're going barefoot then you'll cut your feet and then _what Rin am I supposed to_ - "

But then the Peacekeeper jerks me back so hard he twists something and there's a piercing pain down my left arm but _Rin -_

Why, why are you so fucking selfless?

You're going to _die_, don't you understand that -

Why are you so fucking selfish?

I don't _want_ you to die -

* * *

**going once!**

**twice!**

**third?**

* * *

**5. arrowhead**

No sponsors, no experience, no-nothing Kagamine Rin. District Twelve, Bloodbath. So obvious, so see-through, so heartbreaking. I'm torn-apart but not surprised when the girl from District One - who is it? Prima? - shoots you through the forehead with her fancy arrows.

I would really like to grab her pretty little neck and _snap_ - if it hadn't already _been_ -

That night I curl up in your bed, revert to chewing my fingernails as I try and catch your scent. It's there, in all of its floral fragrance - orange, lavender, is that a bit of vanilla?

That night I climb out of the window, stand there on the windowsill and wonder why I don't drop.

That night I jump off our roof and sit there with my shattered ankle and weep. What's the difference between our lives, Rin? Haven't I just been proven that, that human lives are snuffed out by one flick of a wrist? Yet why is it so different in another way, why humans stick to life if they don't want to and their lives and ripped away from the wannabee survivors?

"Rin..."

I say it aloud and a squirrel laughs at me.

"No-sense, no-sense - " I put it to bed, pick up a shiny rock.

"Mr. Hiyama said that people long before chipped rocks until they resembled blades, spear-ends..."

Spear-ends, arrow-heads, aren't they all the same? I chip and chip and chip and chip until I get a glinting arrow-head (spear-end?). Blade through a forehead, that's how I'd have gone if you hadn't saved me. And now - now I'm cursing an already-dead girl and strangling squirrels.

But -

And then I'm sitting there, dropping the stone and sobbing into my hands because _god_, Rin, why am I a mess and I'd be dead and you _are_ dead and I should _tell, tell you everyone_ -

I pick up the arrowhead and come back home, sturdy on broken limbs.

That night I collect my last keepsake of you. And I tell the world.

"_Thank you_."

* * *

**Five keepsakes of you, **

**to hold on, **

**to build on, **

**to lean on.**

* * *

**I suppose I can say one thing now, Rin.**

**Just one last thing before I bid you goodbye for your inkblot skies.**

**One last...**

* * *

**t**

**h**

**a**

**n**

**k**

**s**

**.**

* * *

**a/n;** I've had this idea for a few months now. I decided that I should start writing again and managed this. why isn't this incredibly overdone and all? I won't lie and say that it wasn't enjoyable; it was fun... while it lasted. D: lol for the slight-ish Rin/Len in my mind.

I made Len act all normal then suddenly turn into a baby under stress. wasn't that incredibly clever? xD

but I'm ridiculously proud of this thing q_q. first vocaloid fic.

also, about the Rin/Len-ish thing... I like - love? - that ship, but not necessarily as incest. and then I ended up confusing myself as to whether this is supposed to be romance. or if the genres should include romance and/or family. so it ended up angst/hurt/comfort. somehow. somehowwwww. :P

Rin & Len © Crypton

the Hunger Games © Suzanne Collins

reviews are roughly the same value as lollipops. please?


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